[guest post by Dana]

This is unsurprising. Yet it also reveals a big disconnect given that the former President and his wife received coronavirus vaccinations back in January at the White House:

Americans who currently reject the COVID-19 vaccine also don’t trust several of the healthcare experts who are urging vaccination.

There is one person whose medical advice these Americans trust — and it is someone who was vaccinated himself in January: President Donald Trump. Half of those who reject the COVID vaccine today (50%), trust medical advice when it comes from President Trump.

That is far more than the share of this group that trusts the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (23%), President Joe Biden (15%), or Dr. Anthony Fauci (13%), the head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. The poll shows that, although no longer president, Donald Trump still has a role to play in the nation’s vaccination efforts. This already seems to have been recognized by Dr. Fauci and other medical experts who have called upon Trump to recommend the vaccine to his supporters, something the former president did in a recent Fox News interview.

…

The public overall is far more likely to trust the CDC (55%), Fauci (46%), and Biden (42%) for their medical advice than to trust former President Trump (31%). Republicans overall (66%) are more likely than those who refuse vaccination to say they trust medical advice from President Trump, compared to 7% of Democrats.

A recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll released earlier this month indicated that 49% of Republican men aren’t planning on getting vaccinated. Yesterday, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made a public appeal to “all Republican men” to get vaccinated:

“I can say as a Republican man, as soon as it was my turn, I took the vaccine. I would encourage all Republican men to do that,” said McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, on Monday, when asked what kind of messaging he can push as the GOP leader to help encourage people, specifically Republican men, that the vaccine is safe and they should get it.

McConnell added that there is “no good argument not to get the vaccination. I would encourage all men regardless of party affiliation to get the vaccination,” at a news conference in Hazard, Kentucky, outside a health care clinic for an event focusing on the state’s vaccination efforts.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

After Georgia’s Governor Kemp signed the state’s voting bill, President Biden came out the following day and wholly condemned it. Part of his criticism focused on his belief that it limited voting hours:

“What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick … deciding that you’re going to end voting at five o’clock when working people are just getting off work.”

— President Biden, in remarks at a news conference, March 25

“Among the outrageous parts of this new state law, it ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.”

— Biden, in a statement “on the attack on the right to vote in Georgia,” March 26

For his inaccurate claims, the Washington Post gave President Biden four Pinocchios:

On Election Day in Georgia, polling places are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and if you are in line by 7 p.m., you are allowed to cast your ballot. Nothing in the new law changes those rules.

However, the law did make some changes to early voting. But experts say the net effect was to expand the opportunities to vote for most Georgians, not limit them.

While the report notes that University of Georgia political scientist Charles S. Bullock III suggested that the President may have been referencing an earlier draft of the bill and not the final copy, it’s good to see accuracy taking priority over the obvious inaccuracy of the President’s claims.

Anyway, while the Georgia law contains the outrageous ban on water being provided to voters in a state where lines extended up to 10 hours last year, it now looks like Florida Republicans will follow suit and also make it illegal to provide water to voters waiting in line:

Florida Republicans are considering a bill that would effectively make it a crime to give voters food or drink, including water, within 150 feet of polling places.

According to the text of an elections bill introduced last week, state law currently prohibits offering voters assistance within 100 feet of polling locations; H.B. 7041 proposes expanding that zone to 150 feet and includes a prohibition on giving “any item” to voters or “interacting or attempting to interact” with voters within that zone.

State Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a Republican from Spring Hill, said in a committee meeting last Monday that the ban would include “food or beverages.”

Is there no end to the pernicious influence of Trump’s “stolen election” lies on the GOP:

“Congratulations to Georgia and the Georgia state legislature on changing their voter rules and regulations,” Trump said in a statement through his Pac, Save America, which repeated his baseless allegation that fraud was a factor in his election loss to Biden. “They learned from the travesty of the 2020 presidential election, which can never be allowed to happen again. Too bad these changes could not have been done sooner!”

–Dana